Consumers are increasing demanding convenience-type food products; products which take a minimum of preparation time but which are comparable to home made foods in terms of taste and quality. To this end, the prior art has attempted to produce high quality dairy-based and/or cheese-based sauces. In most, if not all cases, modified starches have been incorporated into these formulations to impart to the food product a desired thick viscosity especially in those instances where the products are retorted or aseptically processed.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,970,767 issued to Tessler et. al. teaches modified starch blends suitable for use in retorted food products. These starch products are employed as thickeners for piefillings, sauces, soups, baby foods, etc. The starches develop significant viscosity after retort cooking temperatures (240.degree.-300.degree.F.).
U.S. Pat. No. 4,192,900 issued to Cheng teaches an improved retorted or aseptically packaged, tapioca-style pudding containing at least one starch in a milk-based pudding formula. The pudding is processed by an ultra-high temperature, short time method in which the pudding ingredients are combined into a slurry which is preheated to a slurry temperature of from 140.degree. to 150.degree. after which the slurry is placed into a cooker until where its temperature is raised rapidly to 285.degree. to 305.degree.F. for only 8 to 12 seconds, cooled and then aspetically packaged.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,568,555 issued to Spanier teaches a shelf stable cheese sauce having good mouthfeel and superior tolerance to heat. The sauce has incorporated therein from about 4 to about 7 weight percent of at least one starch, preferably a corn starch or mixture of corn starches.
While consumers are interested in convenience-type foods they are also increasingly conscious of food additives and ingredients which are chemically-modified; i.e. non-natural.
While the art has produced aspetically-processed, high viscosity dairy based sauces, it would be desirable to produce an aseptically-processed dairy-based sauce which is all natural containing a natural starch mixture which can impart to the sauce product a desirable texture and mouthfeel.